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Rumor: iPhone to pass up Verizon for T-Mobile

By | July 22, 2010, 1:00am PDT

Summary: The speculation that Apple would end exclusivity with AT&T and bring the iPhone to Verizon has been around for years already. But now, there’s a new rumor that Apple is more interested in T-Mobile. Did anyone see that coming!?

Here we go again…except this time with a twist. The speculation that Apple would end exclusivity with AT&T and bring the iPhone to Verizon has been around for years already. But now, there’s a new rumor that Apple is more interested in T-Mobile. Did anyone see that coming!?

The Cult of Mac blog is reporting, according to an unnamed “highly placed source” at T-Mobile USA, that it is “80 percent likely that the iPhone will be coming to T-Mobile in Q3.” Given that T-Mobile runs on a GSM network (like AT&T) and Verizon uses CDMA chips, this idea actually has potential.

But seriously, the third quarter of this year? That would certainly shock everyone as that seems very sudden for Apple to open up to a new carrier - especially one that hasn’t even really been mentioned in this debate before.

But maybe it’s exactly the kind of press that Apple would prefer to see right now. There has been feedback that last week’s press conference regarding the antenna on the iPhone 4 only made the company look worse, especially after several other competitors issued angry responses when called out about their own devices. If the attention was deflected to something bigger, perhaps most people would just forget about the antenna issue.

The catch with that is that if the antenna problem hasn’t been resolved by the time the iPhone 4 is released with a second wireless provider, there’s certainly no room for placing all of the blame for dropped calls and reception problems on AT&T anymore.

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Apple iPhone, Verizon Communications Inc., T-Mobile, Smart Phones, Consumer Electronics, Personal Technology, Rachel King

Rachel King is a staff writer for ZDNet based in San Francisco.

Disclosure

Rachel King

Rachel King has no business relationships, affiliations, investments, or other potential conflicts of interest relating to the content posted in this blog.

Biography

Rachel King

Rachel King is a staff writer for CBS Interactive in San Francisco. Before serving as a contributing editor at ZDNet in New York City for two years, she previously worked for The Business Insider, FastCompany.com, CNN's San Francisco bureau and the U.S. Department of State. Rachel has also written for MainStreet.com, Irish America Magazine and the New York Daily News, among others. Rachel has a B.A. in Mass Communications and History from the University of California, Berkeley and a M.S. in Journalism from Columbia University, where she served as art director for the student magazine, Plated.

Talkback Most Recent of 68 Talkback(s)

  • RE: Rumor: iPhone to pass up Verizon for T-Mobile
    Isn't it possible that maybe Verizon told Apple to piss off?
    ZDNet Gravatar
    topgun966
    22nd Jul 2010
  • for the second time
    @topgun966 n/t
    ZDNet Gravatar
    Pete "athynz" Athens
    22nd Jul 2010
  • RE: Rumor: iPhone to pass up Verizon for T-Mobile
    @athynz It wouldnt even surprise me if they did. Verizon is happy with their Droid phones and Apple doesn't play nice with wireless providers and tends to point fingers at the content providers instead of take responsibility for their own problems. Verizon doesn't want the bad PR that AT&T gets from its partnership with Apple. And it doesn't need Apple and its fanboys, problems and genuine BS that comes with Apple partnerships. So they probably told them to FK off.
    ZDNet Gravatar
    Jimster480
    22nd Jul 2010
  • RE: Rumor: iPhone to pass up Verizon for T-Mobile
    @topgun966 I doubt that...
    ZDNet Gravatar
    G8rsFan
    22nd Jul 2010
  • RE: Rumor: iPhone to pass up Verizon for T-Mobile
    @topgun966 Yeah, cause Verizon doesn't want those millions of customers. What on earth would they do with all that money.
    ZDNet Gravatar
    I12BPhil
    22nd Jul 2010
  • Sometimes money can cost way too much...
    @I12BPhil

    Yeah, VZ would make a ton of it, but at what price...letting Steve Jobs trash their network anytime he made a public statement?

    I'm sure somewhere at VZ there's an exec who's toyed with the idea of "you keep your iPhone, we'll keep our brand name out of the gutter"
    ZDNet Gravatar
    SonofaSailor
    22nd Jul 2010
  • RE: Rumor: iPhone to pass up Verizon for T-Mobile
    @SonofaSailor
    Yet another of your misinformed statements, pulled straight out of your ass.
    Please post citations to where Steve Jobs trashes AT&T.

    At the same time, please post citations that show that AT&T is NOT an issue.
    ZDNet Gravatar
    DeusExMachina
    22nd Jul 2010
  • RE: Rumor: iPhone to pass up Verizon for T-Mobile
    @I12BPhil
    Dont you mean verizon doesnt want those user on thier network complaining how the iphone drops calls due to its poor production. Then verizon has to substidize these morons on the iphones when the droids are better phones? So its possible as going to tmobile makes absolutly no sense seeing most of the smarter iphone owners unlock thier iphones and already use them on Tmobile since AT&T is so overpriced and service sucks. Now then iphone if it goes needs to be on a cdma network to gain all the new users who are tied to cdma contracts and cant leave to a slopwer gsm network with bad service so going to tmobile is trading apples for apples whats the point?
    ZDNet Gravatar
    Fletchguy
    2nd Aug 2010
  • I don't doubt at all that Verizon told Apple to piss off, & vice versa.
    @topgun966 - I don't doubt at all that Verizon & Apple told each other to piss off, because, even though Apple certainly does need to expand its US iPhone subscriber base far beyond AT&T's borders, and even though Verizon's subscriber base is much larger than T-Mobile's (or Sprint's for that matter), nevertheless, Verizon really cannot offer Apple what Apple needs most from its iPhone carrier partners (while both T-Mobile and Sprint can do so): contract terms with Apple identical to AT&T's.

    In making its choice for a 2nd (& a 3rd?) US iPhone carrier network, Apple's primary need is not for a larger subscriber base (because Apple will quickly build whichever carrier it chooses into a much larger 3G/4G carrier than it has been up until now), but instead, Apple utterly needs (in order to avoid a catastrophic failure for the iPhone, like the Mac's in the middle 1990s) what Verizon constitutionally could never surrender: complete control of the iPhones entire UI & app-marketing widget. That is far more valuable to Apple's financial and technological health/development than all the money it would make with Verizon (if such a partnership were somehow possible).

    Only after Apple has resuscitated and grandly transformed T-Mobile (and/or Sprint) into (a) dangerous competitor(s) of Verizon, and as Verizon's mushrooming losses to the iPhone then become more starkly dire, will Verizon at last be ready to accept Apple's all-or-nothing terms for a bounteously mutually profitable Apple partnership of its own. Verizon must trash its entire culture to do so. (But, it will. Or else it will rapidly wither away.)

    In the meantime, what will be the effect on the iPhone's smartphone competitors, if Apple expands its US iPhone subscriber base beyond AT&T's borders?

    Given that Android's Achilles heel, its lack of control of the whole Android widget, significantly hobbles that platform's competitiveness and ability to foster killer-app development, and also given that Android is currently pushing Blackberry hard for second-place smartphone ranking really only by default because so many of them are AT&T-averse iPhone-coveters who are having to settle for that second choice (recent surveys show most smartphone fans want an iPhone, and the 2nd place but still huge number of them very much prefer a Blackberry), until Google somehow sacrifices/trashes all but one primary Android platform and somehow reclaims much more control of the whole Android "widget" from its carriers, Android will only be loved by a rather small minority of hardware-entranced UI-insensitive Linuxy geeks and will thus never acquire a significant developer community. (Obviously, all other smartphones are dead-men-walking.)

    So, when the iPhone's subscriber base breaks out beyond AT&Ts borders, Android's current primary attraction will no longer exist. If Android could recapture control of its whole widget, only then could it compete with Number Two (Blackberry).
    ZDNet Gravatar
    BurmaYank
    22nd Jul 2010
  • RE: Rumor: iPhone to pass up Verizon for T-Mobile
    @BurmaYank Other than your statement being FUD, the iPhone and iOS are already behind the top Android phones and versions. Meaning that by the time the iPhone even gets off of AT&T nobody will care about the iPhone anymore other than the apple faithful (fanbois). The truth is that Android phones are selling against iPhones 4:1 if not even more (HTC Shipped 4.5M phones to the USA in April alone, with the overwhelming majority being Android powered). So while Apple fanboys talk about how many iPhones are being sold, Android is crushing iOS.
    ZDNet Gravatar
    Jimster480
    22nd Jul 2010
  • RE: Rumor: iPhone to pass up Verizon for T-Mobile
    @Jimster480

    Make stuff up much? Your numbers are GROSSLY inaccurate.
    ZDNet Gravatar
    DeusExMachina
    22nd Jul 2010
  • More cost
    @topgun966 A Verizon phone is a new build - Steve won't even shell out for a fix and recall of the antenna defect, will he do a completely new build with CDMA electronics? And will he give up the ads that show users talking AND accessing the internet (which you can't do on Verizon)? Of course he might just say it's how the user is holding the phone happy
    ZDNet Gravatar
    archangel9999
    22nd Jul 2010
  • RE: Rumor: iPhone to pass up Verizon for T-Mobile
    @archangel9999 That statement "talking AND accessing the internet (which you can't do on Verizon)" is quite false. I have the original Motorola Droid running Android 2.1 on the Verizon network, and I am able to talk on the phone AND surf-the-web and send/receive email at the same time. Your response is more FUD from the ignorant.
    ZDNet Gravatar
    David A. Pimentel
    22nd Jul 2010
  • And When/If This happens
    and T-Mobile's Network experiences problems will there be the same hatred from ZDNet bloggers towards them? Or if the iPhone has signal issues will T-Mobile get all the blame?
    ZDNet Gravatar
    bobiroc
    22nd Jul 2010
  • Can't Stand T-Mobile!
    @bobiroc T-Mobile= Worse coverage in the US. Even worse than Sprint!
    Verizon does not want iPhone because they would have to build in the infrastructure and backhaul support into their system. Like AT&T did for the first year of their Apple contract, for App Market, Video Mail, etc over a separate Garden Walled Network and...... you tell me, you'd be willing to go through the abuse AT&T has gone through being blamed for all of Apple's problems?

    This is a link for a Apple/Fed discussion that points to the extended 5yr exclusivity contract. Also when everyone speaks of a 3yr contract they don't know that it's a separate deal that ended "Unlimited Data" only. The 5yr exclusivity contract doesn't expire until 2012 and could be 2013 according to this link:

    http://lists.apple.com/archives/fed-talk/2008/Jul/msg00157.html
    ZDNet Gravatar
    i2fun@...
    22nd Jul 2010
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